It’s a done deal – Apple says goodbye to White Label Apps for good

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If you’re a hardcore fan of using white label apps for your business needs, you might be befuddled by the recent rejections you have faced in publishing your apps on the Apple app store. On 5 June, as tech enthusiasts devoted more than two hours to watch and dissect one of the most watched keynotes in today’s buzzing tech scene, they were presented with a very vague phrase in the announcements – “App Store Cleanup”. Little do they know what this actually means for big and small corporations around the globe involving app development.

The Apple App Store dished out a new guideline (4.2.6), “Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected.” For the uninitiated, this new guideline is targeted at what is widely known as ‘White Label Apps’ – apps that share the same codebase or template with other apps.

Here comes the inevitable question – Why?

Apple wants to clean up its app store for good, getting rid of spam and apps that are totally unnecessary. Granted, they have had enough of clone apps that are flooding the app store for ad revenue or uploading pirated content. The undertaking to track each and every one of them gets tougher day by day as the volume increases, and they finally think that they have to do something before it gets completely out of hand.

This new guideline is unfortunately, an unsharpened one, as it takes down other constructive apps alongside these clone apps. Companies like Dashride, Buildfire, Biznessapps, and Appsinstitute find themselves at the short end of the stick as their business model of making it easy for small businesses to publish their own white label mobile apps gets crushed.

The Start of Something New

If you happen to be a business owner with published white label apps in the Apple App Store, fret not. Your app can stay, but updates will no longer be available after a set date. The migration to customised apps will be a slow but steady one. And it will certainly be one that is worth it. Legitimate businesses benefitting from white label apps now might be feeling sore from this sudden new guideline, but Apple is a step ahead of the current situation beyond just cleaning up clone apps.

There are a few alternatives – container apps that houses all events under a single app and remain relevant after single events, progressive mobile web apps that require no downloads but provide the same customised experience, or universal event apps that traverse across events and organisers. While this new guideline can seem earthshattering at first, most will eventually realise that nothing much has changed. They are back to the same starting point with only one mission – to provide quality bespoke experiences for app users. White label apps used to be one tool to achieve that. Now that it is out of the picture, they just have to find a better tool to substitute that.

As the tech community puts the limelight on customised apps, the experience for users will become more personalised and secure. Customised apps provide an user experience that is in a whole new ballgame compared to white label apps, and Apple has made it mandatory to take it to another level in the foreseeable future. As businesses continue to digest this new guideline, one thing’s hard to change – it’s surely a good change for them in the long run.